The end of welfare-to-work?

No evidence it will be gutted

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney talked about the White House promoting a “culture of dependency” at a campaign stop in Elk Grove Village on Tuesday. (Stacey Wescott, Tribune photo)

Republicans complain that the Obama administration is moving to gut the highly popular 1996 federal law that put strict time limits on welfare payments and required recipients to find work. Mitt Romney, on the stump and in a new TV ad, says this is more evidence that the White House is promoting a "culture of dependency."

"That is wrong," Romney said in Elk Grove Village this week. "If I am president, I will put work back in welfare."

What launched all this talk was a July 12 directive from the Department of Health and Human Services that announced the states could apply for waivers to rules governing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — welfare.

When we picked up the directive, we expected to find some bombshells.

Instead, we found this:

"The Secretary (of HHS) is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits."

Wordy, yes. What do you expect from a government directive? But what we didn't see in that sentence, or anywhere else in the memo, was anything that gutted the welfare-to-work law.

What we saw was an opening for the states to get some flexibility to promote new ways to get welfare recipients onto payrolls.

States would be expected to boost by at least 20 percent the number of recipients moving from welfare to work and regularly demonstrate they're moving toward that goal.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, said his state's request for a waiver "stems from a desire for increased customization of the program to maximize employment among Utah's welfare recipients." Brian Sandoval, Nevada's Republican governor, issued a similar statement.

Maximize employment? Hmm. Where's the problem with that?

HHS is inviting states to suggest better ideas to move people from welfare to work. It is not unilaterally scrapping the requirements that welfare recipients find work.

The proof of whether there's a sub rosa attempt here to weaken welfare's work rules will be in what the states propose and what gets approved by the federal government. If states try to game the system to water down those rules and the administration lets them do that, then critics will be right to scream.

The 1996 law, signed by President Bill Clinton to the chagrin at the time of many Democrats, sharply cut welfare rolls and helped to enhance job skills of former recipients. Any waiver application that hints that recipients can stay on welfare for as long as they please without finding work should be quickly and emphatically rejected by HHS. The TANF program is a safety net. It should not return to a lifetime invitation to collect a check.

The HHS initiative pivots on an idea that we have long supported: increased flexibility in federal rules for states to encourage innovation. If states are putting too much money and effort into paperwork to comply with federal rules, then change the rules. We have supported waivers from the No Child Left Behind law for states that adopt reforms to promote better student performance and more teacher accountability. (Ahem: Illinois' bid for an NCLB waiver still hasn't been approved. Illinois has some more work to do.)

On welfare-to-work, we see no evidence of a gut job. Let's find out what the states have in mind.